Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Prehistory Wars 2 - Uncle societies

Christopher Ryan has written a book titled Sex at Dawn. The aim of the book is to popularise the idea of open marriages. His basic argument is that our hunter-gatherer ancestors were peaceful egalitarians who shared everything amicably including sex. It wasn't until the advent of agriculture and settled communities that property relations arose and women lost their status and began to be treated as sexual possessions.

In my last post, I pointed to one problem with the argument. At the time of European contact the Tasmanian Aborigines were living a primitive hunter-gatherer lifestyle. But they weren't peaceful egalitarians. European observers were shocked by the low status of women, the sexual jealousy and violence, and the intertribal warfare.

Matters in these small hunter-gatherer bands were settled forcibly. And it was men who possessed the force to decide issues.

There's another problem with Christopher Ryan's argument. He uses as evidence for his theory the family practices of certain tribes such as the Mosuo in China:

The Mosuo people of China practice a form of courtship and sexual interaction anthropologists have called "walking marriage." This form of "traditional marriage" consists of women and men being completely free to sleep with whomever they like, children being cared for by the woman's family - her brothers assuming all paternal responsibility. Biological paternity is a non-issue among the Mosuo. Every tryst is seen as an independent event, with no expectation of permanence or even continuity expected in amorous relationships.

Ryan overstates the casualness of relationships, but the gist of it is correct. Ryan also writes, when discussing the practice of sexual gossip in various tribes:

One very interesting exception to this that we discuss in Sex at Dawn is the Mosuo people, of China. Part of their view of romance is that sexual gossip is deeply shameful and must never happen. Each person's sexual autonomy is absolute (men's and women's) and any attempt to limit this essential freedom by innuendo, declarations of jealousy, or any other means is strongly discouraged and ridiculed. As one Mosuo woman put it, "Women and men should not marry, for love is like the seasons—it comes and goes." Of course, the Mosuo have a family system which doesn't depend on married couples to provide social stability.

So here we have a claim that a magical dream society for liberals, one in which each person's sexual autonomy is absolute, actually exists in the provinces of China.

So what's the problem? Ryan predicted that the hunter-gatherers would be the sexual autonomists and that the agriculturalists would be the property owning possessives. But if we take the Tasmanian Aborigines and the Chinese Mosuo it seems to be the other way around. It is the peasants, not the hunter-gatherers, who institute the sexual autonomy.

Which leads me to a (speculative) theory of my own. It might be true that once you give up being nomadic foragers and hunters and live instead as agriculturalists that property issues become more important. But how should the property be transmitted from one generation to the next?

In a society in which female sexuality is not carefully regulated, it makes sense for the property to be passed down along the female line. After all, in such circumstances a man would know that his sisters' children would be closely related to him. But he couldn't have much certainty about any offspring of his own.

In these societies, fatherhood was not very important. What mattered was being an uncle. Men would typically live with their sisters, helping to raise their sisters' children (a matrifocal system).

These societies were not strictly speaking matriarchal. Men would still run the tribal councils. And there remained a division of labour, with men typically being the hunters and warriors, and women tilling the fields and looking after the homes. But the organisation of family life might be left to the older women.

This is what happens with the Mosuo. Men spend their lives living with their mothers and sisters, handing over whatever they produce to the senior woman in the house. The men get to visit a "wife" in another house during the night, but return home to their mother's house during the day. The power to veto relationships lies with the senior women.

Such "uncle" societies have existed in parts of Africa and Asia. A ship's doctor in the German colony of Cameroon described the situation there in the nineteenth century as follows:

With a large number of tribes, inheritance is based on maternity. Paternity is immaterial. Brothers and sisters are only the children of one mother. A man does not bequeath his property to his children, but to the children of his sister, that is to say, to his nephews and nieces, as his nearest demonstrable blood relatives. A chief of the Way people explained to me in horrible English: "My sister and I are certainly blood relatives, consequently her son is my heir; when I die, he will be the king of my town." "And your father?" I inquired. "I don't know what that means, 'my father,' answered he. Upon my putting to him the question whether he had no children, rolling on the ground with laughter, he answered that, with them, men have no children, only women.

But what happens if female sexuality is tied more closely to monogamous marriage? Then men can have more confidence in their paternity. They can then form their own households and pass property directly to their own children. Men have a more direct reason to work productively to sustain a household of their own.

Consider the case of "Joe", a young Mosuo man who has little role in society until his sister has children:

"If you could afford to buy a souvenir stand, would you?"

Joe laughs, almost spitting in the direction of the knickknack vendors. "Mosuo are not shopkeepers."

"So, what do you do?"

"I have a good time. I help my uncles and cousins build houses. I'm young. I have no status until my sister has a child. Then, I'm important."

It's not that he doesn't do anything. But he's not responsible for a household of his own. His incentive to work is not as great as a man seeking the resources to marry and support a family. Is it any wonder then that the societies which eventually produced the dominant civilisations were not matrifocal, uncle societies but paternal ones?

It's not that the advantage runs all one way. A danger of paternal societies is that men withdraw excessively into their fatherhood role, neglecting the communal leadership that is reserved for men in uncle societies.

But even so, the evidence seems very clear that father societies were the ones to create wealth and more sophisticated forms of civilisation. The Mosuo, unsurprisingly, suffered from grinding poverty for much of the twentieth century and even now are experiencing encroachments from the Han population.

21 comments:

It appears the entire book is a mass of category error. It is as if someone set out to write a book about animal husbandry, and having discovered an albino sheep then proclaimed that all sheep can be albino, under the right circumstances.

History tells me that matrifocal/matrilineal societies can produce some very effective warriors, but patriarchal ones produce armies. That's why societies such as Mosuo remain anthropological curiousities, the equivalent of albino sheep.

History tells me that matrifocal/matrilineal societies can produce some very effective warriors, but patriarchal ones produce armies.

That's a useful way of putting it. Some of the matrifocal societies did produce a warrior class; it might even be true that the reduced family role for men allowed them to focus more on such pursuits.

But it was the father societies which were more dynamic in pushing forward civilisation.

Interesting too that when traditionalists speak of wanting to keep father families intact that we are accused of wanting to go back to the 1950s but that "progressives" are happy to invoke a much more radical historical regression in supporting their ideal of autonomous family life.

Interesting too that when traditionalists speak of wanting to keep father families intact that we are accused of wanting to go back to the 1950s but that "progressives" are happy to invoke a much more radical historical regression in supporting their ideal of autonomous family life.

That's true, but I expect that the response would be this: patriarchy was an aberration, and an abominably disastrous one which led to wars, oppression, sexism, racism, colonialism, wealth disparities etc., etc., etc.

This is a common tack now: back to the future liberalism. In a bookshop a while ago I was perusing a book, the premise of which was (similar to what Jared Diamond has been saying for a few decades) that the agricultural revolution was an unmitigated disaster for our species, as it led to overpopulation, income disparity, hierarchy, sexism, racism, environmental degradation and so on and so on. Basically for these people all of human history for the last 12,00 years is a litany of evil, and what we consider to be human civilization was a colossal mistake.

It's like Worf says about the Borg: "They've adapted, Captain.". They know now, many of them, that the old enlightenment-based arguments about the blank slate and so on are on their way to being crushed underfoot by the new sciences. So, they are adapting, by coming up with their own thesis of what "human nature" really is.

The battle remains the same, yet the battleground, in intellectual terms, is shifting. We need to be nimble and recognize that. The good news is our side was the first one on the new battleground, really, and they are playing catch up. But we can't underestimate their ability to do that.

Don't these liberal bilge-merchants ever learn? It seems to me that this Ryan is simply peddling the same fraudulence that Margaret Mead was peddling about sex-mad Samoans 80 years ago. Except that by all accounts Mead sincerely believed her own tripe, whereas Sex at Dawn gives every sign of outright mendacity. (If Ryan isn't mendacious, he must be a bigger fool than I thought.)

That's a useful way of putting it. Some of the matrifocal societies did produce a warrior class

I would also like to note that the most successful warrior classes are the ones that emerge from essentially patriarchal societies. A warrior with something to fight for will fight with greater ferocity than the man who simply sees it as a station to focus on.

Also, the Mosuo are lucky. If they had been up against any other prehistorical hunter-gatherer society, they'd be wiped out. Prehistoric tribes were at war 70% of the time, and the tribes that reproduced the fastest dominated those that could not keep up. Unless these caretaker ucles can magically grow uteruses, they're done. Nowadays, I highly doubt the Han Chinese will be as accepting of these counter-productive cultural quirks.

I wonder, if you tell a liberal that, considering man's prehistorical propensity for warfare, long stretches of peace are an actual historical abberation, what would he say?

"But even so, the evidence seems very clear that father societies were the ones to create wealth and more sophisticated forms of civilisation. The Mosuo, unsurprisingly, suffered from grinding poverty for much of the twentieth century"

You are certainly correct here, one of the major underlying forces behind the wealth of Europe lay in the general practice of the eldest son inheriting all the property on the death of his father. This meant capital accumulated from generation to generation and when this was coupled to the notion of a limited liability company where you did not have to risk all of your capital the wealth of Europe exploded.

By contrast matrifocal/matrilineal societies pass little from Generation to Generation and build little capital which why they could only show a large tribal hut with carvings in the 20th century and Europeans could show you the Palace of Versailles in the 17th Century.

Slightly off topic but interesting. In the Solomon Islands one of the major tribal group passes property through the males whilst the other passes it through women. The male line tribe has frequently expanded its property by marrying into the female passing tribe, which aggravates the tensions there.

This also reminds me of the later work of Gimbutas, who became a kind of archeological feminist as she aged. It has been a long time since I tried to read her books, but I recall that like Mead she seemed fond of extrapolating quite a lot from a very small basis of fact.

Perhaps Novaseeker is correct that this is an attempt to deal with the growing body of knowledge about the actual physical brain differences between men and women. This latest version of libertinism is just another variation on an old theme.

To be really blunt, there is an implied contract in a functioning civilization: the high-status men agree to not monopolize most of the women, and the lower status men agree not to try to kill all the higher status men. When you have a society where the average man has little chance for a wife of his own and the children that go with that, there's not much investment in that society, and it's going to have to be held together by force rather than common agreement. Expending all that energy on just keeping people in line means the society tends to stagnate.

This kind of polyamory was no doubt common in French salons circa 1750 or so. We all recall what happened in France starting in 1789...

They know now, many of them, that the old enlightenment-based arguments about the blank slate and so on are on their way to being crushed underfoot by the new sciences. So, they are adapting, by coming up with their own thesis of what "human nature" really is.

"Jared Diamond has been saying for a few decades) that the agricultural revolution was an unmitigated disaster for our species, as it led to overpopulation, income disparity, hierarchy, sexism, racism, environmental degradation and so on and so on."

Agricultural society itself was a response to overpopluation. Basically, after a certain population had been reached, a hunter-gatherer way of life was no longer feasible, so people had to adopt to farming or starve or kill each other. Note how low the population density of Aboriginal Australia was for example.

All that really changed with the arrival of Agriculture was societies good larger, population density increased and those at the top accumulated more wealth.

As far as warfare, oppression of women etc, this would have either stayed the same or decreased. Compared to the size of the global population warfare is at an all time low.

Population imbalances have always been an issue for humans and blaming them on a particular social system just doesn't make sense. Japan is more traditional and patriarchal than Australia, yet has significantly lower birth rates. The only difference in more partiarchal Japan is that their isn't such a big difference in birth rates between working and middle class women, and women don't have kids so late.

I'm curious to know if, on the publication of Ryan's book, there are any stirrings of second thoughts, any embarrassment, among the conservative intellectuals who once hailed sociobiology as a prop for a conservative view of human nature. It turns out that sociobiology—a.k.a. the promiscuous manufacture of Just So Stories about what hunter gatherers were like and how they got to be that way—can be shaped any way the scientists like, to prop up any view of human nature fits their preferences or their political agenda. So we were once told that hunter gatherers were monogamous, and this was supposed to support conservatism. Now we're told that hunter gatherers had sexual morés identical to those of contemporary sexually liberated people, and this is supposed to support sexual liberation and the downgrading of the importance of marriage.

Lesson for conservatives: guidance on how to live and organize human society cannot come from science, and most of all it cannot come from science about our pre-civilized ancestors. It can only come from our perception of the good, as developed through our civilization's strivings over the centuries to live in conformity with the good.

Why is an anthropological/biological book written by psychologists gettings so much attention?

They know now, many of them, that the old enlightenment-based arguments about the blank slate and so on are on their way to being crushed underfoot by the new sciences. So, they are adapting, by coming up with their own thesis of what "human nature" really is.

Which ought to lead to the paradox of "if human nature included pususing sexual autonomy, then what force built these repressive cilicizations that restrict autonomy?" Do they argue that humans building civilization is somehow in violation of human nature?

"Do they argue that humans building civilization is somehow in violation of human nature?"

Excellent point, Liesl. It is a common misconception that human civilization and "nature" are somehow separate and often opposing entities. Yet what humans do must be as much a part of the natural order as is whatever other species do. The only difference is in the greater complexity of our motivations.

"I'm curious to know if, on the publication of Ryan's book, there are any stirrings of second thoughts, any embarrassment, among the conservative intellectuals who once hailed sociobiology as a prop for a conservative view of human nature."

How can this question be answered if no such persons are identified by the question's asker? I am unaware of any conservative intellectual whatsoever who hailed sociobiology with any enthusiasm, or even hailed it in the spirit of faute de mieux.

To whom in the world can Dr Auster be referring? E. O. Wilson, perhaps? As far as I am aware (I am of course open to correction), Wilson has never in his life espoused political conservatism, and his most comprehensive critics have been either anti-Darwinian conservative Catholics (e.g. Brian Coman) or anti-Darwinian conservative non-Catholics who, nonetheless, eventually sympathised with traditional Christianity (e.g. the late David Stove). If not E. O. Wilson, then whom?

Lawrence Auster, Ryan is VERY selective in his choice of the Mosuo, who are clearly NOT a hunter gatherer society.

I suspect with them, their society has developed the way it has because they have matrilineal inheritance. If property descends purely through the female line, then monogamy is of far less importance. For one thing, a man does not “have children” and hence is not concerned about whether his wife’s children are his. A woman does not see men she is sexually intimate with as her family in this system and so is less likely to feel betrayed if such men chase other women. However I would still be surprised if sexual jealousy isn’t a feature of their society. The point is that jealousy would be more like the high school case of jealousy over who gets who, rather than over property or children. There are other societies which had polygamy for WOMEN where women could have several husbands. The most notable of those were the so-called “white Huns” who were steppe horsemen who ravaged Persia at the end of the ancient world. The point, though, is not so much that such societies existed, but how rare they were. The “normal” Huns (Attila’s people), the Mongols and Turks were also Steppe nomads, and did not have such practices. As anonymous Protestant put it, these examples are actually so rare that they are akin to claiming albino sheep would be the normal state of affairs were it not for our “biased animal husbandry”.

I wonder if Mr Ryan is an avid reader of the “Earth’s Children” series of novels, which seems to push this rather fanciful idea. The trouble with prehistoric societies is that various people with agenda can use the absence of actual hard data to impose their own ideas as how they would have liked those people to have lived. The clear example is the feminist utopia model that certain feminist academics have imagined. It is not logical, because they draw upon “facts” really drawn from people widely separated in time, distance and culture, from the Isis cult of Egypt, the so-called “Venus figurines” from the European Palaeolithic, and the Athena and Artemis cults of ancient Greece. They hack out the features that suit their thesis, and then coble them all together to from the “evidence” if this matriarchal old style religion which was suppressed by this invasion of misogynists 10,000 years ago, but somehow persisted for 8,000 years! There is plenty of this “documentation” around, also cherry picking facts from atypical social groups. Is this Mr Ryan’s documentation? This stuff borders on pseudo-science, certainly the “conclusions” are much wider than anyone who can competently style themselves a “scientist” could reasonably conclude.

I think the key point about Ryan's perspective is that he wants to have his cake and eat it. This is a VERY COMMON contemporary conceit. He wants the stability of marriage, but still have the freedom of sleeping with anyone he can get hold of without feeling guilty about it, or being seen as a philanderer. If his wife is really willing to let him run around, that is HER business rather than ours. I am enough of a “liberal” (and I would hate to be so identified) to think that it is their choice. What I object to is being lectured and pushed by such people into thinking that this is some kind of ultra moral course, or that I have to give it my approval. I do wonder how many of his sexual partners (I wonder how many he’s really had?) actually feel that way? Perhaps that is the real problem? Is it that too many women he wants to bed aren’t willing to just be his bit on the side?

This “open marriage” didn’t seem to work out too well for Shane Warne, and it nearly destroyed his marriage. I know personally quite a few women, who have very non-traditional attitudes towards religion and society but are completely opposed to the notion of open marriages. Rather they give indication they support them, but when they are involved, it’s another story all together. I’m sick of self-indulgent people trying to get me to say they are moral and right to do whatever gives them self-gratification. I don’t try to get people to tell me that it is morally right for me to have a pint of beer or eat chocolate, and there are certainly a lot of people trying to tell me it is either wrong to do such things, or I should cut down on it.

I'm curious to know if, on the publication of Ryan's book, there are any stirrings of second thoughts, any embarrassment, among the conservative intellectuals who once hailed sociobiology as a prop for a conservative view of human nature.

Uh, the answer would be no, because Ryan's book is shit, and obviously so. It's the new Mismeasure of Man.

BTW I presume that Auster is mainly referring to Steve Sailer, the most prominent evolcon.